The GeForce GTX 460 is the latest DirectX 11-based graphics chip from NVIDIA. Video cards based on this new GPU are available between USD 200 (768 MB version) and USD 229 (1 GB version), making them the most affordable DirectX 11 video cards based on an NVIDIA solution. With the recent price cuts conducted by AMD/ATI, this new graphics processor competes directly with the Radeon HD 5830. Let’s see how this factory-overclocked version from MSI, dubbed the N460GTX Cyclone 768D5/OC, fared in our tests.

The GeForce GTX 460 comes with higher core and shader clock rates (675 MHz and 1,350 MHz) than the GeForce GTX 465 and GeForce GTX 470 (607 MHz and 1,215 MHz for both of them). The memory clock used on the GeForce GTX 460 is actually higher than the one used on the more expensive models (3,600 MHz against 3,206 MHz on GeForce GTX 465 and 3,348 MHz on GeForce GTX 470), but the memory bus width depends on the GTX 460 model you have: the 768 MB model uses a 192-bit memory interface (translating into a 86.4 GB/s maximum theoretical transfer rate), while the 1 GB model uses a 256-bit interface (115.2 GB/s maximum theoretical transfer rate). The GeForce GTX 465 has a 256-bit memory interface (102.5 GB/s), and the GeForce GTX 470 has a 320-bit memory interface (133.92 GB/s). The main difference among the GTX 460, GTX 465 and GTX 470 is the number of graphics engines (a.k.a. “shaders” or “CUDA cores”): 336, 352, and 448, respectively. On the table below we compare the main specifications of the five video cards we included in our review. The Cyclone 768D5/OC model from MSI comes with a 7.4% overclocking.